Cocktail of the Week: The Black Bee

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"The Gold Rush is a pretty popular neoclassic drink (bourbon, lemon, honey), which comes from a Bee's Knees (gin, lemon, and honey). I took the Gold Rush format, and I brought down the honey slightly in order to keep the refreshing nature of the drink as forward as possible. Especially because I was pairing with stout, which definitely has more residual sweetness than a lager or a brighter, paler beer like a witte. We use all tap beers — we have twenty-one taps of LA local beers — and originally I used the stout that I had brought on board there. That's an imperial oatmeal coffee stout. It's got a rich viscosity to it, and it's fairly heavy, so it just overpowered the drink. We have a fantastic porter on tap, which is related very closely to stout, but it tends to be a little lighter, so I blended the two in the drink (an ounce and a half of each), and it worked quite well. That said, if people want to make it at home, they can use a pretty standard stout like Sam Smith.

"Don't go overboard on the beer. Also, try to pour the beer down into the drink so that it mixes thoroughly. Some people make beer cocktails and try to float the foam on top for an attractive layering effect. I think they perceive the foam on top as resembling egg white, but I personally think that's a bad way to approach it. Here, you're not just separating texture, but also taking away from a unified flavor profile. You'll end up getting all beer on top and all cocktail on bottom." —John Coltharp, The Parish, Los Angeles